The River
by CeilidhO
Summary: (Undergoing re-construction) What if Scully had gone to Salt Lake City? She and her new partner are assigned to a bizarre string of kidnappings, with dangerous results. Meanwhile, a murderer is at large in Charleston, and only Mulder can catch him.
1. Prologue

**VERY IMPORTANT:****THE MULDER POV CHAPTER IS CHAPTER 2!**

**Title:** The River

**Author:** CeilidhO

**Summary:** What if Scully had accepted the transfer to Salt Lake City? Three years later, she and her new partner are assigned to a bizarre string of kidnappings, with terrifying and dangerous results. (Prequel to "Disciple") 

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing, Chris Carter owns everything. We all know the drill. Please don't sue me. 

* * *

****

****

PROLOGUE 

****

Dulles International Airport

Washington, DC

July 2, 1998

5:14 am

Dana Scully stared out of the darkened window, watching the winking, blurring lights that were the distant airplanes. Alarmingly close, a massive jet idled at a low whine just in front of the gate, the stylized 'W' on the tail fading into the spreading dawn. Her stomach was cold and tight with fear and anticipation. The thin, Styrofoam-packed seat below her squealed as she shifted position.

_His face, so close she could see each hair in his stubble…_

Stop it. If she thought about him now, she'd never have the strength to get on that plane. 

She watched the small children in the row of seats that faced her. The older child, a boy, leaned over the younger girl, whispering to her softly. His hand covered hers as they ran their fingers over the words in the brightly colored book on the girl's lap. Their lips moved in silent tandem as the girl struggled through the story, sounding out each letter under the boy's watchful eye. For some reason, Scully was moved almost to tears.

She clenched her icy hands in her lap as she wrenched her gaze away, staring back out the window with her eyes glazed, seeing something entirely different than the far off runways. She saw a musty hallway, and an unshaven man.

_"What's wrong?"_

_"Salt Lake City, Utah. Transfer effective immediately."_

She saw every detail of his face as the realisation sunk in.

_"You can't quit now, Scully."_

_"I can, Mulder. I debated whether or not to tell you in person…"_

_"We're close to something here! We're on the verge!"_

_"You're on the verge, Mulder. Please don't do this to me."_

How dare he. How dare he ask for her to stay, after everything? A transfer was a transfer. She was Special Agent Doctor Dana Scully, and she played by the rules. She just held him back, anyway. She was so tired of being hunted, of uncertainty and paranoia. Why couldn't he just leave her alone?

_"After what you saw last night, after all you've seen, you can just walk away?"_

Didn't he understand that she was leaving precisely because of all she'd seen? That she couldn't see any more, that her eyes screamed from all she'd seen? 

_"I have, I did, it's done."_

_"I need you on this, Scully."_

_"You don't need me, Mulder. You never have. I've just held you back."_

His every motion radiated his pain. She couldn't take it, not his enormous burden of hurt, not on top of her own. Not now… His eyes struck her with anguish.

"But you saved me! As difficult and as frustrating as it's been sometimes, your goddamned strict rationalism and science have saved me a thousand times over! You've kept me honest ... you've made me a whole person. I owe you everything ... Scully, and you owe me nothing."

She owed him the most extraordinary years of her life. She owed him the time where she had felt the most emotion packed into every second. She owed him the way he had made her come alive. But she was tired of feeling so much all the time. His gaze raked her face.

"_I don't know if I want to do this alone... I don't even know if I can ... and if I quit now, they win."_

Suddenly, Scully was back in the departure lounge, her body stiff and sore, and tears running silently down her face. She wanted to go to him so badly… 

A hoarse voice shouted: "Scully!" It was long and drawn out, full of fear and desperation, a cry she had heard on a thousand cases, a cry she heard whenever Mulder thought that he'd lost her.

"Mulder?" she exclaimed, right out loud, on her feet in a single motion, scanning the lounge for him. Her hair whipped into her face. It was then that she saw the strange looks of the surrounding travellers, and the utter emptiness of the room, the complete absence of Mulder. 

In a horrid lurch of loneliness, she subsided to her chair. It was all in her mind, then. A fantasy… How humiliating, how ridiculous. She was a grown woman.

_His face, so close she could see each hair in his stubble…_

And then, the acid mocking voice in her head: _Kiss it and make it better…_

She flinched away from the memory. Outside the window, in the thick, dark morning, the plane's engines started up abruptly, filling the room with a low, droning undercurrent of sound. After a few minutes, the tin voice burst over the loudspeakers.

"All passengers on flight HP-151 direct to Salt Lake City, please report to Gate 23. We are ready to begin pre-boarding."

Pre-boarding already. There wasn't much time left. Every airport reunion scene from every movie she'd every seen flashed across her vision in a moment of sharp stabbing longing. Mulder vaulting over the seats to her, Mulder taking her in his arms, Mulder whispering fervently in her ear his promises of undying devotion, just Mulder, standing beyond the crowd, an awkward, lopsided smile on his face, his eyes soft and vulnerable. Just to see him again, to feel him again…

"Flight HP-151 to Salt Lake City is now boarding in Gate 23."

Desperation filled her, poured ice on the gaping pit of pain and nerves in her stomach. The cold flooded her body. Quickly now, grasp at the life preserver, something, anything. If something didn't warm her, pull her to the surface right then, she'd drown of agony. 

Warmth, heat, fire. Anger. She lunged for anger, pulled it to her, lit fire to her blood and heart. Righteousness jammed iron strength into her body, pulled her upright, dragged her boarding pass from her pocket and marched her to the line of passengers waiting to file onto the plane. 

How dare he, indeed. How dare he do this to her? She was right, of course, and he was crazy to expect so much of her. She was just one person, and only so strong.

In an uncontrollable slide, her boarding pass was taken from her grasp, and she was waved through. All of a sudden, she was on the wrong side of the divide, past the point of no return. The unbearable pit of agony and desperation gave one last icy, nauseating throb as she took in the emptiness of the departure lounge.

He wasn't going to come. He was never going to come.

Dana Scully turned and walked down the ramp, and disappeared into the dawn. 

- - - - - - - - - -

**A/N:** Hey everybody! I'm back, and I'm giving this prequel thing a try. Let me know what you think, and if you're still interested in this storyline.

Thanks!

~Ceilidh 


	2. Prologue: II

**Title:** The River

**Author:** CeilidhO

**Summary:** What if Scully had accepted the transfer to Salt Lake City? Three years later, she and her new partner are assigned to a bizarre string of kidnappings, with terrifying and dangerous results. (Prequel to "Disciple") 

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing, Chris Carter owns everything. We all know the drill. Please don't sue me. 

****

**IMPORTANT:  NEW MULDER POV CHAPTER!!      (A sample)******

*                   *                   *

Arlington, Virginia

July 2, 1998

5:14 am

Fox Mulder sat on his couch, a hand clasped around a warm bottle of vodka.  Orange juice was settling to the bottom of the glass container, and Mulder watched it dully, his senses nullified and time moving in agonising drips and crawls.  She was gone, and the pulsing remains of the furious anger that had filled him so completely the night before were a hangover, searing through him and creeping through his brain.

She was still so clear in his mind, every detail of her face, her motion, her voice, her smell.  He reached out a hand in front of him as if to touch her, as if he could still be warmed by her skin.__

Her face, so close he can see every eyelash.  The faint perfume of her lips, as they brush his for the briefest of seconds.  

_Then, suddenly, she's gone, a cold vacuum against his skin.  _

He moaned under his breath as a wave of pain overtook him.  Should he have seen it coming?  Did she ever feel the same way?  He loves her; he's in love with her, in a fanatic ripping light and heat that frighten him beyond comprehension.  The cold of her absence froze him from the skin down, halting his motion and slowing his thoughts.  

He took a swig from the bottle, and grimaced at the stale liquid.  He couldn't remember when he mixed the drink, or how long he's been sitting here.  All he could taste is the sour aftertaste of fury and alcohol.

_Her warmth is gone, a vacuum against his face. " Mulder, no.  I can't.  I have_

_ to-" she says weakly.  _

_Confusion floods him, and reasonable thought seems just out of reach.  "What's wrong, Scully?  Don't you want-"_

_She puts up her hands.  "No, I can't.  Not like this.  Not when all you want is to-"_

_"When all I want is to what?  Scully, I don't understand.  What did I do wrong?"_

_"Nothing," she responds, her voice and posture feeble.  "You didn't…  It's me… I have to go."_

_Frustration begins to gnaw at him, and he charges after her.  _

Back in the present, in the cold painful reality of the morning, Mulder began to cry, slow heavy tears.  They inched down his face and seemed to move independently of time, alternately faster or slower than the world beyond his wounded body.  He squeezed his eyes shut to stop them, and a sob ripped out from his throat.

He can't shut out the memories, which came faster and hotter now, pushing their way out through his burning eyes, rising before his vision.

_"Scully!  Wait!  What's going on?"_

_She turns to face him, her eyes burning now.  "Why can't you just back off?" she cries.  "Why can't you just allow me to make my own decisions?  I'm not a baby!  I'm not your sister!"_

_Rage begins to sneak red-hot through his veins.  "Is that what you think I feel?  That you're her?  Jesus, Scully, get over it!  Not everything in my life is about her.  Would I have kissed you if I thought that?  Would I lo-"_

_"No, Mulder!  Not like this, don't goddamned say it like this!"  Her eyes are streaming, but she doesn't seem to know.  "And you didn't kiss me."_

_"I would have!  You turned away, not me!  Don't you feel-"_

_"No, I don't!  Not like this.  And you didn't really want-"_

With a supreme force of mind, he shuts out the flow of visions, closes his eyes and his ears and his heart to her.  He wrenched himself off of the couch, the leather creaking behind him, and crossed to the phone.  He knew that there was no way that he could survive like his, missing her so much that it made the bile rise in his throat, that made time inch and jerk along like a bad stop-motion cartoon.  

Wincing against the harsh buzz of the dial tone, Mulder phoned the airport.

"Dulles International, this is Alma speaking.  How may I help you today?"

"Hi," he managed, his voice sounding foreign to his ears.  "Do you have any flights leaving for Salt Lake City this morning?"

"Why, yes we do.  The earliest is at 5:30 this morning, sir."  Her words were clipped and antiseptic.  Mulder threw his gaze around until his eyes lit on the clock.  5:22 am.  There was still a chance.   "Oh, I'm sorry sir," the woman continued.  "That flight has literally just taken off.  However, I can get you a flight on the…"

Mulder let the phone fall away from his ear, the tinny voice fading into the background.  Rage and pain poured through his veins, returning from the night, scorching him, and he raised the phone with corded arm and whipped it against the wall as hard as he could.  The pieces shattered with an explosive crash, and rained softly down on the wooden floor.

Anger coursed through him, jammed a burning ramrod up his spine, fired his heart into ageless solidity.  Anger kept him from collapsing like wet paper, from melting away.  Anger braced the arm that found the bottle and tipped it down his throat, drowning him into stupor.

Anger burned away the pain.__

-         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -          -

A/N:  So, this is a sample of the story with Mulder POV.  The case I have in mind for him, if you all want it, is a serial murder investigation in South Carolina.  

Very Important!  Do you want Mulder POV?  Please include that in your review!

Thanks sooo much,          ~ Ceilidh


	3. The Sevier

**Title:** The River

****

**Author:** CeilidhO

****

**Summary:** What if Scully had accepted the transfer to Salt Lake City? Three years later, she and her new partner are assigned to a bizarre string of kidnappings, with terrifying and dangerous results. (Prequel to "Disciple")

****

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing, Chris Carter owns everything. (Except the characters I invent.) We all know the drill. Please don't sue me.

- - -

Millard County, Utah  
August 23, 2001  
5:13 am  
Three years later

The Sheriff's Department car sped along the highway, flashing through the narrow road, following the twists of the river. On one side, the desert mountains loomed, faintly red and grey in the early morning light, and on the other marshland stretched to the flat, green river.

Deputy Martin Orrens chewed his gum loudly, tapping his fingers rhythmically on the window in time to the faint music creeping from the radio. His partner glanced over in irritation, his grasp tightening on the steering wheel.

"Jesus-god, Orrens. You gotta do that?"

"Yup," Orrens muttered smugly. "The music just compels me, Kemp. I gotta follow the muse."

Kemp sighed loudly. "Jesus-god," he repeated. "I need a coffee."

Suddenly Orrens flailed at the window, his eyes wide. "Curt! Godamnit, Curtis, pull over right now."

Kemp's mouth twisted into a mocking grin. "What, you that sensitive…" His gaze followed his partner's as the car slid to a halt, and the joke died in his mouth. At the bank of the river, something small and white was sprawled, horribly still. Both men spilled out of the car and clambered over the shoulder, landing calf-deep in sludge. Kemp pulled out his radio.

"Hey, dispatch, this is Deputy Curtis Kemp. I'm out at the Sevier River, right in the middle of nowhere. Orrens and I think we got a floater, washed up right at the bank. We're going in to take a look."

The disembodied voice crackled back down the line. "Negative, Kemp. Don't go in. If it's a crime scene and you guys mess it up, we're all in for some serious shit."

Kemp pressed the button to reply. "That's a copy, dispatch, we'll-"

"Kemp! Holy shit, Curt, I think she's breathing!"

"The hell?" Kemp swung around and caught sight of Orrens, already at the edge of the river, kneeling beside the prone figure. He was almost eighty yards away. Kemp began to run, the mud and grass clawing at his legs, the forgotten radio crackling at his side.

- - -

FBI Field Office  
Salt Lake City, Utah  
6:48 am

Special Agent Dana Scully hurtled through the front doors of the gleaming office tower, her hair in rare disarray, her shirt untucked. Michael, the security guard, waved her past, nodding a sleepy greeting as she set off the metal detector on her rapid passage to the elevator.

She hammered on the 'up' button, shifting her weight in frustration as she watched the machine's leisurely downward progress on the lighted indicators. When it finally yawned open in front of her, she burst through and smacked the button for the fifth floor. Her stomach lurched with the motion, and she hastily tried to neaten her appearance.

When the doors slid open to the gleaming plush of the executive floor, Scully strode out of the cabin and hurried to the last door on her right. The soft lighting lit up the sign saying 'G. Chilton' as the luminous wooden door swung on its hinges. The secretary in the first room waved her through.

Inside the second room, a desk stood in front of an enormous picture window, dimly showing a magnificent view of downtown Salt Lake and the snow-capped mountains beyond. The desk and its occupant were dark and featureless against the faint light, but Scully recognized the man seated behind it, as well as the one in front.

"Assistant Director," Scully said breathlessly, as soon as she was close enough. "I came as fast as I could."

The older man nodded. "Take a seat, Agent Scully. I believe you know Special Agent Dan Morris, from downstairs in Violent Crimes."

Scully smiled tightly. "Yes I do. Agent Morris, it's a pleasure to see you again."

"Likewise," he said firmly. "I've always been very impressed with your work, especially on that Snow-Mummy case. That guy had been frozen for what, twenty years, and you still got an ID, prints, cause of death, everything. You really cracked that case for us, Agent Scully."

"If we're done with the small talk," Chilton interrupted. "Let's get on with the matter at hand." Scully sat in the second chair across from the desk as he continued. "Now, we just got a call from the Millard County Sheriff's office. They found a young woman, unconscious, on the bank of the Sevier River, on a routine patrol earlier this morning. Miraculously, she's alive, and I'm sending the two of you down to investigate this with the local PD and Sheriff as an isolated abduction and assault case, but in actuality it matches up with two others from about eight and ten months ago, in Kane County."

Agent Morris shifted in his seat. "What makes them similar?"

"Not similar, exact. All are young women of about twenty-five, found at the side of a river, fully clothed, with _this_ on their chests." He shoved a large photograph across the desk's surface.

It was of a woman's front, her hands modestly covering her breasts, her skin pale and pasty from the river water. Across the sternum, in an arc from breast to breast, was the word "_MINE_".

Scully squinted in incredulity at the photo. She lifted her gaze back to the Assistant Director after a moment. "Sir, how is this put on them? Permanent marker, body paint, lacerations…"

"None of the above, Agent Scully," he declared. "Get this: the son of a bitch tattoos it on them."

Morris whistled, low in his throat. "Any sign of sexual molestation?" he asked Chilton, still staring at the photograph.

"They were raped more than once," he answered. "But they were left alive, at least."

"Any indication of how long he kept them?" Scully asked.

"As close as they can guess, about three days. That matches up with the Missing Persons reports filed before they were found." A long moment passed, and the sun peeked over the mountains, suddenly lighting the office in a bright radiance. Chilton sighed, and pushed a small envelope across the desk. "There're your tickets on the 8:20 to Delta. Pack for about four days. I expect a call at 1800 hours tonight." He swivelled the chair to face the window, dismissing them with a gesture.

To the east, the sun wrenched itself free of the mountains, and the day was begun.

- - -

Scully slid into her bucket seat on the tiny airplane, and clipped in her seatbelt with a sigh. Agent Morris turned to her with a smile.

"Not a fan of planes, Agent Scully?"

She grimaced. "Not entirely, no. Especially not ones this small." The propeller spluttered outside. The tarmac was hazy in the heat.

"Don't worry about it, Agent," he said kindly. "I travel on these contraptions all the time."

"There's no need to be patronizing, Agent Morris," she said icily. "It's not as if I usually travel in a horse and buggy."

He raised his hands and shrugged. "Suit yourself. I was just trying to be friendly." He returned his gaze to the window, intent on the busy comings and goings on the tarmac.

Scully glanced over at him curiously. Most people were more upset about the way she kept her distance, but Agent Morris genuinely seemed to understand. His lightly lined face seemed completely free of venom, as were his grey eyes. The light from outside played across his features, making his eyes sparkle in the clear morning sun.

"No, I'm sorry, Agent Morris," Scully found herself saying. "I'm just not very articulate with those I don't know very well."

The older man's eyes were still sparkling when he replied. "I know, Agent Scully. I just want to give you some time to get to know me, you know, not push anything. If we're going to be partners, I'd rather that you didn't hate my guts."

She smiled despite herself. "I hope your usual partner isn't upset about being left out."

"Oh, no, I don't have a partner anymore," Morris said quietly. "My old one, Agent Hasbruck, retired about two months ago. They've just kept me off field work until a new one could be found. What about yours?"

_Mulder. _"Oh, I haven't had one in a long time," she said carefully. "The only people I work with are technicians and scientists. There isn't really much call for someone to watch your back." At Morris' expression, Scully continued quickly. "But don't worry, I'm completely competent. In Washington, I took part in enough fieldwork to last me the rest of my career, at least." _Mulder. Stop it. Don't think about him._

Morris chuckled. "I never doubted it for a second, Agent Scully." He stuck out his hand. "How about a more usual introduction? Daniel Morris. Dan."

Scully clasped his hand with a smile. "Dana Scully."

The engines picked up with a high-pitched whine, and the plane began its ascent.

- - -

Almost two hours later, Scully and Agent Morris pulled into the parking lot of the Millard County Sheriff's department in the small town of Delta. To their surprise, the area outside the door was swarming with police and police cars. Colors and emblems from at least three different jurisdictions could be seen blending in the throng. Periodically, a flashbulb went off, signalling the presence of reporters. Scully turned to Morris in confusion.

"Chilton didn't imply that this case was high profile, did he?"

He shook his head, his eyebrows knitted. "I don't think they're here for us. That's another FBI carpool vehicle over there, and I know that we're the only agents on our case. But what else could it be about?"

They pushed through, and, after presenting their badges to the dour officer standing in front of the doors, were ushered into the chaotic beehive of the office. They were met by the harried looking Sheriff, his voice almost drowned out by the constant ringing of phones.

"Agent Scully? Agent Morris? If you'll please just step on over there, my deputy will help you. I've got some things I gotta clear up, but I'll be with you just as soon as I can." He started back out into the throng, but Scully called after him.

"Sheriff Elgin? If you don't mind me asking, what's going on here?"

He shook his head at her. "Ask the deputy, ma'am. I can't talk at the moment."

Scully raised her eyebrow. "Well, I suppose we should find the deputy then." She and Morris struggled their way over to the corner office the Sheriff had indicated, and as soon as the wood veneer door was shut behind them the cacophony was dimmed. A man in a rumpled uniform stood as they entered, his hand outstretched.

"Agents? I'm Deputy Curtis Kemp." His voice was quiet, with a pleasant desert twang tingeing the edges of the words. His brown eyes were strong and forthright, as was his handshake.

"Deputy Kemp," Morris said, after the introductions had gone around and they were seated at the small table. "It was you and your partner, Deputy…"

"Orrens."

"Right, sorry, Deputy Orrens who found the victim, is that right?"

"That's correct. And her name is Jolene."

"Thank you, we haven't had too much time to prep for this, as you can probably tell. We'd appreciate any help you can give us." _Smart,_ Scully thought. _Very smart._ Morris continued: "What can you tell us about Jolene? Her physical state, mental state…"

Kemp gazed into space for a moment. "Well, she's really beat up. He raped her, and cut her a couple of times, and it looks like he may have hit her pretty hard, too. She's got bruises and she's real timid right now. She's only been awake about three hours. I've been with her since we found her."

Scully leaned forward slightly. "If you don't mind, Officer Kemp, what's going on outside?"

"Have you ever heard of the Choir case, Agent Scully?"

"Possibly…" she said, thinking. Dan Morris cut in.

"For about the last, what, four years?"

"Four years, yeah." Kemp confirmed.

"For the last four years, various jurisdictions have been finding the mutilated bodies of young boys, dumped off the sides of highways."

"It's called the Choir case," Kemp picked up. "Because the first victims were all church choir singers. That's the only link they've been able to find, though."

"I think I remember the papers talking about it," Scully said. "I apologize, Deputy. We should get to the matter at hand."

Kemp stood. "Better than that, I'll show you. Jolene's at the county hospital in Fillmore. I'll take you."

As the desert flashed past the windows of the Sheriff's department car, Scully felt the pull of her sudden waking earlier that morning begin to drag on her eyelids. She fell into a sort of doze, her mind wandering without direction. In a sudden snap, Mulder's face loomed before her, the scent of his body filling her nostrils.

_His face, so close she can see each hair in his stubble… _

_His lips, brushing hers for a split second of electric joy, and the acid voice that slithers into her mind._

_'Kiss it and make it better… That's all he's doing. He doesn't really mean it…' _

_"Mulder, no. I can't. I have to-" His face, suddenly further away as she pulls back. _

_"What's wrong, Scully? Don't you-"_

The car jerked to a stop in front of a tall cement hospital, banishing Mulder to the exile of memory, and leaving her fully awake, alone with the cold anguish of loss.

Shaking off the cold like a blanket, she stepped out of the car. The building before her held her future, and Scully strode forward to meet it, burning the shivering pain off like a fog, preparing herself to face the darkness.

The hospital smelled overwhelmingly of disinfectant. It cleared Scully's head as they stepped through the whisper of the automatic doors, into the almost tranquil interior of the county hospital. Deputy Kemp spoke briefly to the nurse on duty, and then gestured for Scully and Morris to follow him down the gleaming laminate hallway.

The fluorescent strip lights shone in a white diffusion as they set off down the hall. One was broken, and flickered irregularly, buzzing at the edge of Scully's senses. It finally went out as they reached the grey door, and Kemp ushered them inside.

"Hey there, Jolene," he said weakly, to the still form lost in the bed sheets. "I've brought the FBI agents that I told you about before. You okay to talk now?"

"Sure, Curt. I can talk." The form struggled to sit upright. Scully walked closer, and made out a pale face, lost in bruises, cuts, and stiff dried tears. The eyes, however, blazed out with strength.

Scully stuck out her hand. "I'm Agent Dana Scully, and this is Agent Dan Morris. How are you feeling, Jolene?"

The eyes sharpened. "How do you think I'm feeling? I look a butchered cow."

"I'm sorry, that was a terrible question…" Scully trailed off, unsure of how to continue. The victims she usually encountered were straight out of refrigeration, not college. "To be blunt, would you mind if I took a look at some of your injuries? I'm a medical doctor."

A pale smile flickered across Jolene's face. "A doctor _and _an FBI agent, huh? A right poster girl for women's lib."

"I'd like to think so," Scully said lightly, returning the smile. As Jolene reached for the ties at the back of her gown, Morris and Kemp excused themselves quietly.

Jolene eased the gown of her shoulders, small groaning noises escaping her lips, involuntarily. Scully felt sickness rise in her throat as the fabric slid over the wasteland of the woman's body.

Puckered and angry welts rose like mountain ranges, charging their way through her flesh. Many still gaped horribly, thick crusts of fluid caking at their edges. Scully could see one spot on her shoulder where she had been bitten, the pattern marred intentionally with the thin precision of a razor. Whip thin razor cuts were beginning to heal, criss-crossing her legs. There were a few more on her arms. Everywhere that was not cut was bruised. Scully could only see one spot of unmarked flesh on her whole back, and it shone like a heavenly beacon of sanity.

Tears sprang to Scully's eyes. Her hand hovered over her mouth, miraculously whole and healthy. It seemed impossible that any whole flesh should exist after what she saw before her. Scully struggled to drown her emotions.

"Jolene, could you turn around fully, please?" she managed. "I need to see the tattoo."

The woman turned slowly, her hands cupping her breasts modestly. Her breasts seemed like they should be the least offensive part of her. And there it was- the thick black letters, curving in an arc across the chest, stark against the mercifully clear skin surrounding it.****

**__** **_MINE_**

Scully shivered. "Jolene, I completely understand if you're not ready to talk just yet, but can you tell me about the tattoo?"

"The tattoo?" she spat out. "Shit, Agent Scully, I'll tell you about all of them. I wanna see this sumbitch put away."

Scully hovered her fingers over the tattoo, shocked by the menace she could almost feel radiating from it. "Go ahead, then," she managed to grate out.

"He put that on me yesterday, or the day before that. Not too long ago. He used a brand first, then tattooed into the burn. To make sure it stuck, he said. And then he stuck me."

Scully flinched from the brutal honesty. "Did he say anything particular about it, about its significance?"

"Just that it was as good as any purebred dog or horse tattoo. It marked me, you know, marked me out as his. That's all."

Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, Scully blinked rapidly. "What about the other injuries?" She wished she was wearing a lab coat. It gave her permission to be distant, impersonal, safe behind a white polyester veneer of professionalism.

"He used the razor first, cause it healed fast, and after that, he used knives and scissors. But, um, after every time, he poured iodine or alcohol or something that burned on the cuts. That's why they've taken so long to heal. Sometimes, when he was tired, he'd just open up old ones. He raped me almost every day."

Scully was almost sick right there. She closed her eyes, feeling the rushing torment of her senses. "Jolene…" she began, but the other woman cut her off.

"I don't want your pity, godamnit. I just want your help. I only need your help."

They were silent for a long time.

Back at the Sheriff's Department in Delta, Scully poured over photographs of Jolene and the other two victims, tiny grains of the chewable antacid still caked in her molars. Across the worn desk, Dan Morris sighed and his hand down his face.

"Jesus, Scully. This guy is brutal. And he's escalating. That's never a good combination."

Scully rubbed her eyes, and glanced at her watch. 12:31 am. "I know its not. We'd better work fast, and hard."

Dan looked at her with veiled amusement. "But not tonight, not right now. Right now, we'd better get to our motel before Chilton calls out missing persons. C'mon, Dana, on your feet. It's time to sleep."

She wearily let him usher her to the car, and they drove through the summer air with the windows down. The desert almost glowed under the stars and the warmth, and Scully let it caress her face, soothing her eyes and her heart. The moon was half full, and it played silver across her face. She wondered absently if Mulder had any wacky theories about the moon.

The car pulled into the lot of a clean looking motel, and the ignition shuddered silent. Dan got out, and set off down the canopied walkway to the office. After a moment, he returned with a very sleepy owner, who muttered under his breath as he unlocked their doors and shoved the keys into their hands. Scully wearily retrieved her bags from the trunk, and murmured a subdued goodnight to Dan as she shut the door behind her, and collapsed onto the bed.

The next morning dawned early, and Scully found herself suddenly awake at exactly five o'clock. She stared at the ceiling, allowing her mind a second to adjust from the warmth of sleep, and then she was up and moving around the room. She dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, sliding her glasses onto her face with a careless push of her hand. She normally wouldn't venture out into the world without her contacts, but today felt different.

She opened the door with a small groan of the hinges, loving the way the pearly, moist air cupped her face, a slight breeze teasing her hair and her cheeks. The sky was a smudged mix of pale purple and gold, blue and lightest red. The desert looked almost grey under the diffuse light, and the mountains seemed to almost drip moisture. The sand and rock gloried in the damp before the sunrise climbed over the tops of the mountains.

Scully set off barefoot through the gravel parking lot, feeling the tiny stones shift beneath her feet, soft with dust. After a moment, she reached the small lawn behind the row of rooms, and slid her toes through the grass, smiling at the way the dew drops broke and ran across her skin, tiny rivers of cool, thick sensation. The air was so gentle against her skin that it was almost intangible, but that much more glorious because she could feel it, like the lightest of kisses. Her smile spread.

After a few more steps, she stood in front of a looped wire fence, like on a baseball diamond, at home plate. She closed her eyes, and could taste baseball on her tongue: the dust, the heat, the sunlight and the motion. She felt her mind drift towards Mulder again, his face and his baseball jerseys, but cut herself off before she finished the thought.

She trailed her fingers down the tangy metal of the fence, drenching their tips in dew. The latch on the gate gave way with a quiet click, and Scully let herself into the pool enclosure, her bare feet trailing on the worn grey tile, the sky reflecting on the unnatural chlorine blue of the water. Rolling up her pant legs, Scully sat down at the edge, dipping her feet in slowly, feeling the grass shavings and leaf debris that clustered on the surface tickle her ankles.

The air kissed her face, the sky soothed her eyes, the water stroked her legs, and for a moment Scully was perfectly happy.

Dan found her by the side of the pool at seven thirty, the sun strong on her face, the unexpected glasses glinting in the yellow light. She started when she saw him, pulling her feet out of the water and letting herself out of the enclosure.

"Agent Morris," she said, pulling down the legs of her jeans, attempting perfect dignity. "I got up early. How are you this morning?"

He smiled. "I'm fine, Dana. How are you? Ready to carry on?"

She nodded stiffly. "Just let me get more appropriately dressed. I'll only be moment." Scully hurried back to the main building, cursing her carelessness. The last thing she needed was for Morris to think that she was frivolous.

Back in the motel room, the magic of the morning had been burned away by the sun, already scorching in it's waxing August power. Millard County was even further south than Salt Lake, and Scully still found the summers there difficult, after years of north-eastern drizzle and damp. In the oppressive heat of the room, the sun slid from cracks in the heavy curtains, and Scully reluctantly pulled on her dark suit and applied her makeup. The temperature made the light concealer a heavy mask on her face, and she sighed.

Furiously fiddling with a contact lens, Scully threw her clothes into her worn leather travelling bag and locked the door behind her, the metal knob practically singeing her fingers as she turned the key. Braving the cement, she strode up the line of painted doors to the registration office, where a tattered air conditioner was already pumping full blast, tiny strings of paper fluttering from the vent.

She placed her key on the faux wood desk, and turned when she heard Dan's voice.

"Okee-dokee, baby, I'll be home just as soon as I can. I love you one million kisses. Oh, all right, two million. Bye, hon. Put momma on. Good girl." His face was lit with a broad smile, and his eyes twinkled in the slatted light. "Hey, Peg. We're just heading out, but Chilton says we should fly home for the weekend tonight. I'll see you at about eight, that okay? Great. I love you. See you." He hung up, but his fingers lingered on the receiver, as if he were trying to reach all the way down the phone line to his family. He turned to Scully, and she smiled.

"How old is your daughter?"

"Janie, the one I was speaking to just then? She's five and a half. My older daughter's nine. Rachel."

"And your wife?"

"She's Peggy. I don't think she'd appreciate me spreading around her age too much."

Scully flushed slightly. "I know, I didn't mean…"

He touched his hand to her shoulder lightly. "Relax, Agent Scully. I was just teasing." He straightened his shoulders, and turned back to the desk, signing the last charge forms. "Ready to go? I thought we'd go back to the hospital today, so you can check Jolene for any trace forensic evidence, and I can try to get a full statement from her and the deputies. Unless you'd rather the other way around…"

"Not at all, Agent Morris. Something tells be that you're better with the Dictaphone than with a laboratory."

He chuckled. "I've got to side with you on that, Dana. Well, lead on. You can drive today."

Suddenly, Mulder's voice echoed in her head.

_"Let me drive…" _

_"I'm driving." _

_"Scully, it's not what you think…" _

_"I didn't see anything anyway." _

_"Will you let me drive?" _

_"I'm driv… Why do you always have to drive? Because you're the guy? Because you're the big macho-man?" _

_"No. I was just never sure your little feet could reach the pedals."_

Scully snorted with laughter, remembering. Dan looked over at her in bemusement.

"Scully? Did I say something?"

She giggled again "No, no, Agent Morris. It's… uh… just a funny memory from a case I did with the Washington Bureau, almost five years ago. With my former partner, Agent Mulder. The driving offer reminded me."

She laughed under her breath, all the way to the car and out onto the highway.

When they arrived at the County Hospital in Fillmore at nine-thirty, Jolene was already awake, working with a composite artist from the Sheriff's Department. He was outlining the bottom of a chin, realigning it as the woman on the bed directed him. She greeted Scully with a warm smile.

"Hey, Agent Scully. I'm feeling a bit better today, before you ask again and I have to bite your head off for your trouble."

Scully smiled. "I'm very glad to hear it, Jolene. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to do a forensic evaluation today, which means I'm going to have to go over your injuries with a wide array of medical instruments and scientific apparatus. It might not be very comfortable, but…"

"Anything, Agent Scully," she said firmly. "Anything to end this."

The composite artist excused himself, shutting the door behind him with a soft click. Dan shifted uncomfortably.

"As well," he muttered. "I've got to collect your full statement while Scully works."

"Where's this gonna happen, Dana?" Jolene asked.

"Well," Scully began carefully. "It would be the most efficient for me to use the autopsy bay, since all of the equipment is stored there."

"You mean like where they cut up dead people?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so. But if it makes you too uneasy, Jolene, I can easily relocate them to this room."

The pale woman considered, her eyes cloudy. "Of course I'll go," she said finally. "I want this to go as smoothly as it can."

Scully squeezed her hand, and kicked the locks out from the wheels on the bed legs. Dan held open the door.

When they reached the small, metallic room, Scully rolled Jolene over onto the examining table. Dan positioned himself discreetly behind a folding divider as she began to undress. Scully covered her with a sheet, carefully cloaking everything that did not need to be seen right then, and then she rolled over the tool cart. Scully heard Dan click on the tape recorder, and Jolene told her story.

Almost two hours later, all they had was a pale blond hair and a world of nightmares.

_- - -_

As the sun set against the mountains, the tall woman stood by the side of the road, a dying cigarette trailing from her fingers. Her thumb lolled sideways, vaguely gesturing at the narrow headlights that were approaching slowly down the hot road.

The pavement shimmered with the last remains of the midday heat, and the white pickup truck slid to a halt beside the woman's tall figure. The door sprang open, and the quiet, regular chime of the alert drifted from the cab. The figure inside was cloaked with shadow. The upholstery was red.

"Where can I take you, ma'am?" the shadow asked.

"Anywhere," the woman replied, her mouth twisting into a scowl. "Fucking anywhere but here."

The door slammed shut behind her, and the woman looked around, and then back to the road in front of them. The cab was spacious, although littered slightly, and on the dashboard was a cactus and a figurine of Jesus.

In the backseat was a razorblade and a bottle of iodine.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

**A/N:** Hey all! I know that the style's a little different from "Disciple" (using the time/date stamp, etc.), but I hope you'll still like it. The plot will pick up a bit more next chapter, I promise.

Until then,

Ceilidh


	4. Bone White Light

**Author:** CeilidhO

****

**Summary:** What if Scully had accepted the transfer to Salt Lake City? Three years later, she and her new partner are assigned to a bizarre string of kidnappings, with dangerous results. Meanwhile, a serial murderer is at large in Charleston, and Mulder is the only one who can stop him.  (Prequel to "Disciple") 

****

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing, Chris Carter owns everything. (Except the characters I invent.) We all know the drill. Please don't sue me. 

*                   *                   *

Charleston, South Carolina

August 10, 2001

3:01 am

          The warm wind rattled the palmetto leaves as the thin man walked through the darkened street.  He sneeringly avoided the sidewalks, instead marching up the middle of the road.  He angrily gave the finger to a driver who dared to honk at him.  

His frustration grew as he looked up at the crescent moon.   His lean face reflected in the pale bath of moonlight, harsh lines carved into the flesh from years of dissatisfaction.  In his head echoed an endless stream of curses, railing against every object that met his eyes.  His eyes were nearly purple in the bone-white light.

The rare moisture was beading on the worn pavement beneath his feet, the scattered remnants of an unexpected afternoon rain shower.  The wind was still damp from it, and it felt odd on the man's skin after the stifling stillness of the usual Carolina summer.

He passed a dark alley, framed in wisteria from a nearby house.  He caught a silver flash in the darkness, sudden and abrupt against his sight.  Wary, he stepped closer to the swimming, inky blackness of the lane, and finally right to its edge.

"Hello?" he muttered crabbily.  "Is some s.o.b. in there?"

In a rush of wild, violent motion, an arm shot out from the darkness and dragged him screaming from the light.

*         *         *

Quantico, Virginia

August 13, 2001

11:32 am

          Fox Mulder sat in his drab grey office, the summer sunlight filtering through the heavy café curtains that stretched across the top of the bare far wall.  The room was murky, and Mulder's feet were hazy to him from where they were propped on the desk in front of him.  His long legs extended back to the shabby wheeled chair where he sat.  A large pile of sunflower shells littered the floor below his drooping hand.

          A loud knock on the closed door startled him, and Mulder jumped, dropping the magazine that sprawled listlessly on his lap.  Swearing, Mulder leaned over to pick it up, calling peevishly at the same time:

          "Come in!"

          The door was opened, and Mulder saw a well dressed, forty-something man carrying a file folder.  

"Yes?  Can I help you?" he snapped.  The man extended his hand confidently.

"Agent Mulder?  I'm Agent Jonathan Fuller."

Mulder glared at him.  "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

The man's self-assured manner faltered for a moment, but quickly recovered.  "I'm a profiler, worked on the Dunne case…" Seeing that none of this had any impression on the other agent, Fuller got to the point.  "I'm your new partner."

"You're kidding," Mulder muttered.  "They must be scraping the barrel more than usual."

"Excuse me?" the other man said, faintly incredulous.  Mulder made a neutral noise and gestured to the other chair, which was piled with junk.

"Have a seat, Agent _Fuller_."  He smirked at the agent's expression, and turned to the slide holder on the desk, resuming the mind-numbing work he had been avoiding when Fuller had knocked.  The other man shuffled uneasily after a few moments of being ignored, and spoke up after a few more.

"Agent Mulder," he began.  "I was sent down here because I heard you had a new case.  Do you?"

Mulder looked up and stared at Fuller for another pickling moment of silence.  When he began to fidget with discomfort again, Mulder spoke.  "I do indeed, Agent Fuller."  He purposely pronounced the name like an insult.  "You interrupted me when you arrived."  Mulder polished the last slide and slipped it into its slot in the tray, then hefted the plastic circle and carried it to the projector.

"What…" Fuller began, but Mulder shushed him and flicked off the lights.  The projector whirred to life.

"Three deaths," Mulder said, assuming his lecture voice.  "In nine months.  Two women, one man.  Each a different race, a different social class, a different life."  A passport photo of each the victim flashed on the screen as he spoke.  He pressed the button again, bringing up a crime scene photo.  "Each with exactly the same wounds: eight stab wounds, perfectly through the heart, lungs, navel, kidneys, stomach, and lower intestine.  Each also had the skin on the left side of the face removed.  That includes the left ear, eye, nostril and the left side of the mouth."    

"Jesus Christ!" Fuller exclaimed.

"Oh, I doubt he'll be much help in the situation," Mulder said, his tone mocking.  "Just whip out that Bureau credit card and buy us two tickets to South Carolina."

*         *         *

Charleston, South Carolina

August 14, 2001

2:52 pm

          Mulder climbed into the rental car in a foul mood.  Fuller had managed to irritate and infuriate him more than pretty much anyone had before.  The man was arrogant, rude, insensitive and completely oblivious to anyone but himself.  On the flight, he'd referred to the flight attendant as a 'hunk of meat'.

           _Speak of the asshole_, Mulder thought as Fuller climbed in the car, his shirt open and sweat clotting his brow.  Without another word, Mulder started the car and pulled out of the rental lot, swinging onto the street.  Above them, the sky burned a vibrant blue, dotted here and there with low clouds.  The heat was thick and clinging.

          It took half an hour to reach the police station, and the air-conditioned building was a relief.  Mulder crossed the room to the main desk, flashing his badge.

          "Hi," he said to the clerk.  "I'm Special Agent Mulder from the FBI.  I got a call from the chief of police yesterday."  He completely ignored Fuller, who glared at him from behind.

          "Oh, yeah," the clerk said.  "He said to come on back.  Who's that with you?"

          Mulder didn't try to hide the dismissive tone in his voice when he answered.  "Another agent.  Where's the chief?"   

          "C'mon with me."  The young man led them behind the desk and into the main room.  A prostitute leered at them from a holding bench, and they crossed through a sea of messy desks to an office at the back.  A broad man of about forty in uniform was bent over a desk inside, but straightened at their knock.

          "Agent Mulder?" he asked when he caught sight of their suits, the South thick and slow in his voice.  Irritation lit Fuller's face again at being passed over, and this time he jumped into the conversation.

          "And I'm Agent Fuller," he declared.

          "Nice to meet you," the chief said.  "I'm Captain Baylor Clancy.  Welcome to Charleston."  He turned back to Mulder.  "We found the body of the most recent victim quite a ways out of the city, pretty much in a swamp, but he was killed in the city, in an alleyway.  Which site would you like to see first?"

          "I suppose the death site," Mulder said, and then turned to Fuller, his eyes mocking.  "C'mon, Snoopy, back to the car."

          Fuller flushed bright red, and when they were back in the parking lot he rounded on Mulder.

          "Goddamnit Mulder, I'm not your lackey!  I know what you're trying to do, and I'll let you know something."  He sneered.  "I'm not going to be tossed out like the others.  I have influence in Washington.  I know people, people who could get your sorry, pathetic, alien-chasing ass out of the FBI so fast it would make your mother dizzy."  When Mulder remained silent, he took it for victory and went on.  "Yeah, I thought so.  Not so tough.  So, I think I'll be taking charge from now on, okay buddy?"

Mulder stared out at him, his gaze never shifting an inch.  He slipped on sunglasses, cloaking his eyes, and pulled out his cell phone.  He hit speed dial, turned his back to Fuller, and spoke for a few moments, indecipherably.  When he turned around, he handed the cell phone to the other agent and walked to the car, satisfaction filling him.  

He let the smirk hang his face as he watched Fuller's back stiffen, his gestures grow broader and angrier, and finally slam the phone shut.  He stalked to the car, and threw himself in.  

"I hope you're fucking happy now, Mulder," he snapped.  "I'm on the first flight tomorrow morning."

Mulder gazed at him with exaggerated sadness.  "Oh, so soon?  Too bad."

Fuller looked about to explode with anger as Mulder backed them out and followed Clancy's police cruiser into the street.

*         *         *

The alleyway off Crown Street was bright in the afternoon sunlight, and Mulder slipped under the yellow crime scene tape blocking off the entrance.  The bloodstains splattered on the wall and asphalt were almost black with time and exposure, but they were clearly pooled in two separate areas.

"Close as we can figure it," Clancy was saying, "He stabbed him through the heart here."  He pointed the first black spot.  "Did the rest of the stabbing here."  He pointed to the stains spread over the junction between the wall of the nearby store and the pavement.  "And removed the skin over there."  He gestured to an immense stain on the flattest part of the alley.

Mulder took it all in, his sunglasses dangling from his hand.  "I agree, Captain, but you should probably have a forensics team determine for sure."

"Who is this guy?" Clancy asked in bewilderment.  "He's butcher with the knife, but so precise, too.  He punctured all those organs exactly in the center."

"He has medical knowledge, then," Fuller said sulkily.  "That's obvious."

Clancy turned to Mulder.  "Some kind of deranged doctor, then?  Rejected med student, de-licensed surgeon…"

"All valid possibilities," Mulder said, his mind far away.  "But somehow I don't think so.  It's too obvious.  This guy appreciates subtlety."

Subtlety…  Delicate…  Skin…  The left side…  The sinister side… 

Mulder laughed, low in his throat.  "He's playing a joke, with the faces.  In the middle ages, the left side was known as 'sinister'.  It's like a pun for him; left, sinister, murder, evil.  He thinks he's so clever."

Clancy was staring at him like he had just sprouted a third eye.  "How on earth did you get that?" he asked, wonder and trepidation clear in his voice.

"Just follow the brain-train," Mulder said flippantly.  "It rarely derails.  And look at the next station."  His roving eye had finally caught something: a yellow slip of paper wedged in a crack in the mortar of the brick wall.  He snapped on a pair of gloves and crossed over to it, easing the paper out gently, unfolding it to the message, written in stark red ink.  

_'Slice, slice!  Three down, you to go.'_

-         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         

**A/N:**  Hee-eere's Mulder!  You asked, I delivered.  I'll work as fast as I can in creating the Mulder chapters to go with the Scully ones, and when they're evened up the story will go on with alternating POV chapters.

I hope you like the new improved, shiny and sparkly version of the story!

~Ceilidh


	5. Jolene

**Title:** The River

****

**Author:** CeilidhO

****

**Summary:** What if Scully had accepted the transfer to Salt Lake City? Three years later, she and her new partner are assigned to a bizarre string of kidnappings, with terrifying and dangerous results. (Prequel to "Disciple") 

****

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing, Chris Carter owns everything. (Except the characters I invent.) We all know the drill. Please don't sue me. 

*

**All right, this is the second new, improved chapter, incorporating the former chapters of _Jolene_ and _Inconsistent_.  It picks up after Scully and Dan have interviewed Jolene and are headed back to the Sheriff's Department, extremely disturbed by what they've ****heard.**

*** **

Millard County, Utah 

**August 24, 2001**

**12:42 pm**

The drive back to Delta was tense with anxiety, the beauty of the landscape outside of the window almost unnoticed by the occupants of the car. The noon sun blazed overhead, but the tiny space was chill with fear and air conditioning. Dan finally broke the silence, glancing over at the redhead at the wheel.

"Dana, what the hell are we getting ourselves into?"

"I don't know," she sighed. "But these women need help, and I suppose we're the ones to give it. I can only hope we're up to it." 

They flashed past the Delta town limits, and within two minutes were pulling up to the lot of the Sheriff's Department. The usual sea of multihued cruisers were splashed out front, but to their surprise the press seemed almost renewed in energy, eagerly flashing photos and interviewing each other, for lack of any more forthcoming official.

Scully and Morris pushed through them, ignoring the popping bulbs and shouted inquiries. All were on the subject of the Choir case.

Once through the doors, they were met by Deputy Kemp, and, for the first time, his partner, Deputy Orrens. 

"Agent Scully, Agent Morris," Kemp asked politely. "How's Jolene today?"

"Better," Scully replied. "Her disposition is- Hey! Watch where you're going!"

The tall man in the Italian suit who had collided with her turned around, leering arrogantly.

"You were standing in my way, Officer." He replied coldly. "I'm an FBI agent, and I'm waiting here for some of my colleagues." His accent was northern, and for a moment it sounded almost foreign to Scully's desert-acclimated ears.

"Well, _Agent_," she spat out. "I'm an FBI agent as well, and you are extremely disrespectful. God forbid that I should ever be your colleague."

As they glared at each other, Sheriff Perkins bustled up behind them. "Ah, Agent Scully, Agent Morris. I see you've met Agent Fuller. He's the profiler Chilton sent up, and he's all yours."

          There was a long pause, laden with the incessant buzz of the ringing telephones. Scully finally choked out a humorless laugh.

"You've got to be kidding."

Sheriff Perkins shook his head, bewildered. "No, ma'am, I'm not. AD Chilton just sent him down on the morning flight. He's all the way from Washington. The capital," he added, as if she wouldn't understand. "He's here to help y'all. I thought you'd be more grateful."

Fuller smirked. "As did I, Sheriff. Most agents are more appreciative of my ability to aid them with _floundering_ investigations."

Scully raised her eyebrows incredulously. "_Floundering_, Agent Fuller? We've been out here for only two days. What, are we supposed to have a conviction by now, be wiping our hands, congratulating each-"

She was cut off. "I honestly don't see why not, Agent Scully. It's only rape."

She thought her eyebrows couldn't reach any further. Dan was beginning to go dangerously red. "Only rape?" she exclaimed, her voice rising. "Only… Only rape?"

"Listen, Scully," Fuller smirked. "I realise that as a woman, you're more sensitive to things like this, but to the rest of us…"

Scully put up her hands, speechless with incredulity. She turned her gaze to Sheriff Perkins. "He's going back, right now. I do not want to hear anything about it." She began to walk away, and Dan went with her, but shot back over his shoulder:

"Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out."

It took them both a while to calm down, once they were safely back in their office, cushioned against the tumult outside. Dan smacked his hands down onto the table, making the photos jump into the air.

"I've met some assholes in my life…" he began.

"But now we've met their king." Scully finished.

"I was going to say their God," Dan said wryly. "But king works." Scully began to pace.

"Of all the arrogant, self-absorbed, sexist, bigoted…" The door burst open. The smirk was the first thing she saw.

"I'm afraid it's not that simple, Agents," Fuller said. "Understand this: I was assigned by your superiors. I don't answer to you, to Sheriff Perkins, or to Assistant Director Chilton. I answer to the Section Chief at Headquarters, and I'm not going anywhere."

"Fine," Dan responded, his usually twinkling eyes steely and hard. "But understand this: this not 'only rape', and _we_ are the senior agents here. You will be polite and reasonable and above all, professional, or I will have you hauled back to headquarters so fast it will make your ass spin. Are we understood?" A vein stood out on Fuller's forehead, and he opened his mouth, but Dan cut him off. "Are we understood?"

Fuller nodded slowly, resentment etched on every line of his face. Dan promptly ignored him, and turned back to Scully, who was beaming. "Right Scully, let's get back to work. I wanted to ask you about these abrasions here…"

By the evening, Scully's eyes were like sandpaper. The grisly photographs were strewn in front of her, along with pages of hastily scrawled handwritten notes. Dan sighed, and flipped over another sheet of his notepad, glaring at it through the reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. He clicked out the nib of his pen, and set it to the paper.

"Right, so, we have victim number one, a secretary. Taken from the street just outside her office building in Salt Lake. Found by the Jordan River outside the city. She described various bizarre sexual acts the abductor forced her to perform, many of which recur with the other two women. However, not all of them do."

"Which is really screwing around with cataloguing sexual preferences," added Fuller. "If I could just narrow it down, I could define a lot more about him."

Scully thought for a moment, then sifted through the masses of paper, retrieving a stapled printout. "According to this, from the Behavioural Sciences database, many of these acts don't correlate. For example, victim one described being…" She consulted the case file briefly. "Hung from the ceiling beams while blindfolded, and the same occurred with victims two and three. This usually means that the offender is someone with an preference for control scenarios, for power. He's someone who prefers complete domination of his victims, someone who usually has a power disorder."

"That's correct," said Fuller. Dan ran a hand through his hair.

"Where're you going with this, Scully?"

"Give me a moment," she said, and then continued. "Now, victim one also described being placed in a bed, restrained only by the knife that the abductor held, and forced to complete a scenario that seemed meant to simulate consensual sexual relations. The same thing happened with Jolene. That type of behavior, of personality, is completely incongruous with the type of personality that would commit the previous type of assault. This, according to the BSU, should not be the same person. The list of similar discrepancies goes on."

"Are you suggesting, Agent Scully," Fuller sneered. "That, although we have three separate women who are adamant that they were only attacked by one man, you know better and are therefore theorizing that it was more than one man?"

"I'm not sure that I'm theorizing anything at the moment, Agent Fuller," Scully shot back. "I'm merely putting forward a problem that requires an explanation. I'm doing my job, which is more than I can say for y-"

"Okay," interrupted Dan. "Why doesn't one of us get coffee?"

Scully stood at the bubbling coffee pot, watching the tiny trickle of liquid slowly fill the plastic jug. Her attention was caught by the click of the office door. Fuller slid out, and walked over to the snack table, where another clean-looking man in a suit stood nibbling on a day-old danish. Scully recognized him as Agent Hugh Adams, the profiler on the Choir case.

"Good god, Adams," Fuller said. "I've got to get out of here. This case is such a piss-off assignment."

"Well, Fuller," the other agent responded. "You certainly pissed off, so it kind of makes sense." 

Fuller flushed. "It's fucking Mulder," he snapped. "He doesn't accept anyone. It wasn't my goddamned fault."

Scully's hand shook violently, shook so hard on the handle of the jug that she spilled just-brewed coffee all over her wrist. Muffling an exclamation, she listened harder.

"Yeah, sure. It's never anyone's fault if Mulder rejects them. He's got half the section on his 'not' list. But hey, aren't you working with his old partner, from the X-Files? Agent Sculler?"

"Agent Scully. Yeah, I am."

"And?"

Fuller smirked. "Let's just say, that lame old Ice-Queen nickname is the understatement of the century. She's wound tighter than a nun's-"

Scully turned and walked back to the office. Even news of Mulder wasn't worth listening to talk like that. Shame and anger pricked her cheeks with tiny red needles.

As the sky melted into complete darkness, Scully felt the plane lurch into the air. The desert was flat and pitch black under the flashing lights on the wings, and the mountains stood dull against the starry sky. 

Scully sighed and settled back into her seat, fiddling with the strong edge of the file folder on her lap. Something still wasn't sitting right with her; it felt wrong to leave the town before the case was closed. She felt like she was abandoning Jolene. The plane's upward motion pressed on her head.

Dan drummed his fingers on the armrest of the seat between them, turned sideways in his own seat on the aisle. He rubbed his hand over his mouth, whispering to himself as he reviewed their case notes. All around them, the plane was virtually silent and empty, except for the young family toward the front of the cabin. Fuller shifted impatiently in the row in front of them.

A low, gnawing ache of loss. Regular swells of nausea. She's as cold as she's ever been, and the whine of the engine presses on her ears like water, like a foot on her temple. 

_Beneath the window, the city is lost to Scully's view as they reach the cloud layer, her entire life vanishing under opaque water vapour. In the row across the aisle, a baby begins to wail, piercing and wrenching, raw with pain. _

_She knows just how he feels._

The plane landed in Salt Lake City with a bump, and Scully was jolted out of her reverie. Dan swept together his papers, grumbling under his breath as he did. Fuller stood with a grateful moan, and slid his briefcase out of the overhead compartment. Scully shook her head to clear her mind, and stepped after Dan out of the plane, the case file clutched tightly in her fist.

The airport was eerily empty, and the agent's footfalls echoed on the shining floors. In the baggage reclaim, the carousel started with a screech of gears, and stopped within a minute and a half when the pitiful four bags appeared. Back down the hall, out of the Gate window, Scully could see their tiny plane taxi back into the darkness of the tarmac.

When the frosted glass 'Arrivals' door slid open before them, cries of delight filled Scully's ears unexpectedly. Two small girls burst out from behind the barrier, and slammed themselves into Dan's legs, squealing in joy. Dan swept the smaller into his arms, and crushed the older against his side with his free hand. He dropped kisses on their heads, and murmured in their ears. 

The curly haired woman who had been standing with the girls stepped forward now, and Dan leaned forward and kissed her deeply, to a serenade of disgusted exclamations from the children. The two adults beamed at each other. 

Scully stood awkwardly to the side, shifting her bag between her hands, and glancing down at her feet. She caught Fuller's eye for a split second, and in that moment they both registered the absolute lack of a greeting party for the other, and what that meant about their life. They knew each other, and then Fuller flinched away.

"I'm getting a taxi," he snapped, and stormed away through the far doors. Dan glanced at him in surprise.

"I'd better go too," Scully said softly. "You should, um, be with your family."

"Don't even think about it." Dan replied. "Here, let me introduce you: Janie, Rachael, this is my new work partner, Dana Scully. Say hi."

"Hello," they chorused, each with the faintest southwestern accent. The older girl giggled, and said: "Daddy, it's funny."

"What's funny, sweetheart?"

"Your names, of course. Your Dan, she's Dana. They're spelled almost the same. It's funny!" 

Dan grinned at Scully. "I suppose it is," he said. "I'd never thought about it like that."

The curly haired woman leaned forward, extending her hand. "My husband's forgotten me, like always. I'm Peggy Morris. It's very nice to meet you, Dana."

"It's nice to meet you, Peggy," she answered.

The woman smiled. "Dana, you'll have to let us drop you at home. Come on, we'll all fit in the car somehow."

In a decidedly better mood then when she'd arrived, Scully left the airport behind her, to a chorus of '99 Bottles of Beer…'.

Late that night, Scully's phone rang, shocking her awake and stupefying her senses. After an eternity of the shrill noise, she managed to roll over and slide the receiver into her hand.

"Hello…" she mumbled.

"Dana? It's Dan Morris."

"It's three thirty in the morning…" she whined, feeling like a small child awakened for school.

"This is important. I think I've got the solution for the inconsistencies in the sexual behaviour."

"Oh?"

"Dana, this is big. Now, I noticed that on the first and last days the behaviour was very compatible, but it was a complete mess in between. That seemed really odd, but when I thought about it…"

"What?" He had her attention now. Every inch of sleep was shaken form her body.

"It's just him doing the attacks, we know that. But what I think…"

"Dan…" Her every nerve was taut, waiting. Her fingertips were cold.

"Dana, he's taking requests."

-         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -

A/N:  All right, Mulder's up next with the chapter _Spanish Moss_.  Enjoy!

Also, please let me know what you think of the new amalgamated chappies, by (what else) reviewing!

Thanks so much!

                               ~ Ceilidh


	6. Spanish Moss

**Author:** CeilidhO

**Summary:** What if Scully had accepted the transfer to Salt Lake City? Three years later, she and her new partner are assigned to a bizarre string of kidnappings, with dangerous results. Meanwhile, a serial murderer is at large in Charleston, and Mulder is the only one who can stop him.  (Prequel to "Disciple") 

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing, Chris Carter owns everything. (Except the characters I invent.) We all know the drill. Please don't sue me. 

*               *               *

Charleston, South Carolina

August 24, 2001

3:43 pm

        Come to Carolina if you want to die.  That had been the saying around the time of Civil War, and the hot blanket air and whirring mosquitoes that hung in it like zeppelins seemed to attest to the truth of the words.  No breath of wind stirred the city, except on those rare blessed occasions when a faint breeze swept off the ocean, through the Battery to the streets.

        Eleven days had passed in an endless procession of background checks and waiting for lab results.  Section Chief Guent, director of the Behavioural Sciences Unit, had recalled Agent Fuller on their second day in Charleston and sent him off on some punishment assignment to god knows where.  Mulder couldn't really care less.  He was alone again; he worked better alone.  At least that was what he had been telling himself for the last three years.

        The summer heat was worse than any Mulder had ever experienced, and he spent most of his time in the humming air-conditioned bubble of the Police Department, pouring over crime scene photos and endlessly revising his profile.  The autopsy of the victim from the alleyway had revealed nothing that they didn't already know, and not a scrap of DNA evidence had been found at either crime scene.  The police officers were beginning to resent Mulder's presence; they had been expecting a miracle, an instant solution.  

        With that in mind, it was half relief and half sick disappointment that filled him when they received a frantic call from a distraught tourist that afternoon- he'd found a body on a plantation.  The poor man's description of the corpse matched the other victims, and Mulder and Police Chief Clancy had piled into a cruiser and were now racing down the highway.

        Mulder felt excitement course through him.  I was so unusual for a profiler to actually be present when the body was found and examined.  He was usually only able to work on a case when the police had exhausted every other option and the trail was long cold.  He was anxious to see the actual body.

As he watched a strip mall flash by outside the window, he thought about the note that had been left in the alley.  _Slice, slice!  Three down, you to go._  It seemed to him an empty, self-aggrandizing move on the part of the killer.  He was hoping to become someone like the Zodiac Killer or Jack the Ripper or the Son of Sam, a correspondent, striking fear into the populace with his letters, a constant stream of publicity and ego massage.  How incredible a rush, Mulder thought, to know that you have paralysed a city with fear, just by leaving a little note.

The police cruiser pulled through the front gates of Boone Plantation, passing through the manicured gardens and the gaping tourists, through a back field that never made a photo-op, and to the very edge of the forest.  

Mulder unfolded himself from the car, slipping his sunglasses off and taking a good look around.  Police had cordoned off a rectangle from the edge of the field to about ten feet into the forest itself.  The yellow tape hung listless in the broiling air, and the officers milled about, taking statements from the tourist who had found the body, canvassing passers-by, or just enjoying the commotion and break from routine.  A sergeant standing nearby gestured Mulder and Police Chief Clancy over to the forest.

"Tourist found the body about nine feet in, but in pretty clear sight.  Poor guy almost fainted from the blood.  It's pretty bad, I gotta say."

"Thanks, son," Clancy said, clasping his shoulder.  "You just go on and call for the morgue van.  We'll take it from here."

The sergeant nodded and headed off the other way, and Mulder and Clancy began to walk into trees.  A strand of Spanish moss from an overhanging branch brushed Mulder's cheek like a caress.  A thick, sludgy trail of blood was clearly visible, pooled all the way to the grassy field- the tourist had said that that was how he had found the body, by following the blood.  The two men had only taken a few steps before they saw it too.

It was sprawled across the forest floor, a man about twenty-three years old.  He had been stabbed eight times, precisely through the center of different organs: heart, each lung, each kidney, stomach, navel and upper intestine.  As well, the left side of his face was missing.  Unexpectedly, Mulder felt a lurch deep within his stomach, a surprising throb of nausea and dizziness.  He thought he'd seen too much now to ever be sickened by a body again, and the knowledge that maybe he hadn't thrummed inside him like a drumbeat, reverberating unpleasantly in his chest and heart.

"Jesus H. Christ," Clancy breathed. "I saw the last one, but still…  It hits you, doesn't it?"  He placed a meaty fist over his chest.  "You don't expect the sheer violence of it to hit you, after all the cases I've worked, but it does."

"I know…  I feel almost physically sick…" Surprisingly, Mulder found himself being honest with the Police Chief, letting his guard done for a split second, but he shoved it back up quickly.  "Well, let's take a look."

He moved over to the body, his latex-clad hands moving in the air above the cold flesh.  Clancy crouched down beside him.  "Tell me about the killer, Agent Mulder.  Who is he?"

Subtle…  Above all things he is subtle.  Every situation twists to his advantage, every person deciding, acting, without even knowing that they are obeying the desire he wheedled into their brain.  A slow, steady drip of words and questions falling into their ears like poison on a thread.  He loves to watch them do what he wants, unaware of his utter control.  They are like ants, hurrying about their pre-determined business, and he is poised above them with a hose of scalding water.  He can unleash hell on them at any moment.  And yet he waits… savouring…

"Power," Mulder said, half to himself.  "Power is his game, his joy.  He manipulates everyone he meets, convincing them to do it his way, and they don't even know it.  He's that subtle…"

        "The wounds, Mulder.  Why does he stab them like that?"

        Gray's Anatomy on the bedside table, university biology textbooks beneath…  Criminology dissertations, True Crime paperbacks from the supermarket.  He's read everything he can get his hands on.  He's so smug.  And the notes…

        "He wants to impress us," Mulder continued.  "He thinks he's so well read.  The stabbings don't mean anything special; it's just to show us that he knows what he's doing.  Maybe even to lead us into suspecting a doctor or a med student...  Goddamnit, Clancy!" he cried suddenly.  "He thinks he's so smart!  But he's not.  He just… he just reads about what others have done and dreams up ways to improve them.  He thinks he's smarter than every one of your officers, smarter than anyone else.  He thinks he's leading us in a dance…" 

        "If he's read it all," Clancy muttered apprehensively.  "Than won't he know everything we're going to do?"

        Without thinking, Mulder put his hands on the body.  The cold flesh was an affront to his senses.  It was wrong.

        "No," he said.  "There's the difference; he wants to be an expert, maybe even a profiler.  But I am those things.  He is the shadow, and you and I, Clancy; we're what cast it.  That is why we will catch him.  He is a pale imitation of the real thing."  Anger nipping at his heels, Mulder turned and strode away, carrying away the essence of murder under his skin.

        From that moment he was consumed.

        The clock on the bedside table said three-thirty in the morning, and surrounding the pool of light where Mulder was sequestered the room and windows were pitch black.  The thin, yellow light lit on the swirl of bloody images that encircled him, the same photographs he had been studying since that afternoon.  A sour taste of scotch lurked in his mouth, and around him the crimson bodies melted into a grotesque phantasmagoria of death and violence.

        The case report and ME's report were piled next to him on the floor, but it had been hours since his eyes had grown too dry to read.  All that was left was the total submersion of the photographs, the spiralling red abyss that he threw himself into with each new killer.

        He knew these brutal men better than they knew themselves; he knew their histories, their psyches, the scars on their big toe.  He knew their secrets and their lies, the way they still sometimes woke up wet and warm at night, how sometimes they still pulled the legs of mice for pleasure.  He knew if they saw Nazis or little boys or hanging women when they closed their eyes and touched themselves, if they saw their mother or their girlfriend or themselves.  He saw through their eyes and burrowed into their brains, and finally he watched as cold iron was strapped around their wrists, and then he knew precisely each thought that ran through their mind as the metal kissed their skin.

        _No wonder so many of us crack_, he thought.  _We are the men we hunt; prisons madden them and we die a little every day from the things we have seen and done.  Our fates are tied from the moment we sit in an office and surround ourselves with their art._

        And so Mulder sat, and threw himself deeper and deeper until he felt the unmistakable wriggle of interlocking consciousness, the awakening of that part of his emotional imagination that he switched off to keep himself safe from the possibilities of the understanding that it brought, safe from the renewed onslaught of madness.

"White male, thirty-five to forty years of age," Clancy read out loud a few days later.  Mulder stood nearby, braced against the water cooler, his eyes red and hooded, his t-shirt and jeans rumpled.  His hair hadn't been brushed since he'd first sat down with the photographs.  Clancy cleared his throat and continued.  "Lives alone, and is an avid reader of crime fiction and non-fiction.  He will have in his possession at least: _Gray's Anatomy_, a non-fiction criminology paper, a subscription to _Law Enforcement Bulletin_, and _Psychology Today_.  He will have applied to the FBI and/or the CIA, as well as possibly a pre-med college for pathology or kinesiology.  He is well spoken, with excellent written and oral skills, and will be a forcible 'life of the party'.  However, will not be liked by peers, who will find him bossy, pushy, unpredictable, irritable and perhaps 'creepy'.

"He will be living alone, and will never have managed a successful sexual relationship, because of his need to be in control of anyone or situation he encounters.  He will, however, have rather frequent sexual partners, because of his acute ability for manipulation.  His home will be obsessively neat, but there will be a hidden or closed off room that will reflect his true personality: chaotic and violent.

"He will dress well and be reasonably attractive, but nothing outstanding.  He will always be ordered and collected, well spoken and well educated, but anyone who crossed him will remember his incredible capacity for sudden and irrational anger.  He will be in excellent physical condition, with quite probably a home exercise machine in his living room.

"He will certainly correspond further with police or the press."

Mulder swayed on his feet as the Police Chief finished, and braced himself against the water cooler.  "So," he said, his lips dry and voice hoarse.  "What do you think?  Is it enough?  Does it make sense to you?"

Clancy licked his lips, and ran a finger down the page again.  "I think," he said, "That I'm going to issue an A.P.B.  Good work, Agent Mulder.  I can see why they say what they do about you."

"What's that?" Mulder asked, trying to muster the strength to be defensive.  "What do they say about me?  That I'm spooky?  A freak?  Making it up?"

Clancy looked up at him openly.  "That you're a genius."

Thrown, Mulder mumbled thank you, and turned to leave the room.  When his back was turned, Clancy said suddenly:

"I had a little girl, you see.  She was kidnapped and sexually assaulted when she was six, in 1982, and the FBI sent a profiler, even though the department wasn't fully functional yet and the FBI had no jurisdiction.  I learned later that the profiler took sick leave and came on his own time."  Clancy's voice thickened suddenly.  "Anyway, this agent did what you did, you know, shut himself up for a few days…  And when he came out, he handed me a piece of paper, like you did, and stood right where you are now.  I read it, and passed it to my superior, the former Chief of Police, who laughed it off as Freudian mumbo-jumbo."  Mulder could only hear the man's voice, which was rapidly growing fainter.  Clancy coughed and continued.

"But, despite what the Chief had said, I read it again, and then I asked him: Is this true, is it right?  And he looked me right in the eye and said only: Yes.  Against my direct orders, I went to that radio and issued an All Points Bulletin for what was on that paper, and three hours later they arrested him trying to cross the border into Canada, on the strength of that bulletin, on that piece of paper.  So, I'm what you might call a believer in you and your work, Agent Mulder, and I will never call you a freak."

Stunned, Mulder stayed where he had frozen at Clancy's first words, speechless and pained.  "Sir…" he began, but Clancy cut him off brusquely.

"Go back to the hotel, Agent Mulder.  Sleep.  You deserve it."

And so Mulder continued out of the station, into the heavy Carolina summer, collapsed onto the motel room bed, and slept for hours.

-       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -       -

**A/N: ** So, this is the second to last catch-up chapter.  After next Mulder POV chapter, it'll be Scully's turn again, at last.  Please let me know what you think of the new chapters, and I'd love some feedback on the how I'm handling writing Mulder.  I've never had to write as him for as long before, and I'm not sure I quite have a handle on him.  As always, constructive criticism is more than welcome.

Thanks so much,      ~ Ceilidh

PS:  Thanks to April, who keeps reading my stories even though they scare her and she's never seen an episode of the show in her life.


	7. A Conference of Minds

**Author:** CeilidhO

****

**Summary:** What if Scully had accepted the transfer to Salt Lake City? Three years later, she and her new partner are assigned to a bizarre string of kidnappings, with terrifying and dangerous results. (Prequel to "Disciple") 

****

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing, Chris Carter owns everything. (Except the characters I invent.) We all know the drill. Please don't sue me. 

Little A/N:  For some reason FF.net won't separate out the 'scene' breaks (the extra spaces between different scenes).  So, as odd as it looks, I've put little *s at the scene breaks so they're more evident.  I hate the way it looks, so sorry.

* * *

For a moment, Scully was speechless.  "Taking requests?" she managed to get out.

"I know, I know, it sounds crazy…" Dan began.

"No, no, it makes perfect sense," she said, excitement filling her.  She tossed back her covers, and slid out of her bed, her feet hitting the floor in a cold slap.  "So the first few days, and the last few, it's all him, but the others…"

"It's someone else's.  Or many people's, actually."

Scully moved into her kitchen, and began to heat the kettle.  "But how's he getting in touch with his… clients?"

"The internet, that's my best guess.  You can pretty much find anything there."

"My god."

Dan sighed. "Yeah, I know.  I haven't been able to think of how to track him down, but we'll work on it.  Together."

Scully smiled to herself, and laughed slightly.  "Yes, Dan.  I'll see you tomorrow, or Monday."

"Bye, Dana."

The kettle let out an ear-splitting shriek, and Scully jumped.  Touching a hand to her chest, she crossed over to it, and began to make a cup of tea.  Suddenly her hand shook, and water splashed all over the counter, the individual droplets steaming on the linoleum surface.  Her heart pounded inside her, slamming convulsively against her ribs, as quickly as a drum roll.

Taking requests… 

She concentrated very hard on breathing, and slowly brought her fear under control, slowing her heart and the race of her thoughts.  As her hands unclenched, Scully dipped the teabag and sat in her armchair, waiting for first light.

*         *         *

As the moon rose over the desert, the battered face of a woman turned towards it like a plant seeking light and life, her eyes closed in fear or unconsciousness.  The silver streamed through a narrow casement window, touching the rough cement walls of the cellar and painting a strip across the floor.  The woman gleamed at its center.

In the corner that the moonlight cannot reach, a tiny red dot appeared suddenly, and a low whine of machinery crept through the room.  The woman began to stir.

A voice hissed: "Number three-dash-nine-dash-eight, you're up.  I'm ready, so's she."  The woman moaned, straining against the ropes that bound her wrists and ankles.  The hand on the machine tightened in anticipation, the moonlight just touching his broad knuckles.  "Let's get this show on the road."

As he moved across the floor, the machine whined again, and the moonlight glinted of the camera's lens.

*         *         *

On Monday morning, Scully found Dan in the main office, surrounded by rows of desks and the busy hum of computers and conversation.  He was hovering over an intense looking man, who was pounding away on a keyboard with his nose a half-inch from the monitor screen.

"Dana," Dan said pleasantly.  "Good morning.  I'd like you to meet Agent Cook, the only techie agent I could find so early in the morning."  The man flailed a hand at her in greeting, and then rapidly entered a long string of computer code.  Scully felt her mouth twitch.  Finally, Cook sat back with a loud sigh.

"It's useless, Morris," he huffed.  "There're just so many sexual sites on the internet.  It's impossible to check out all of them, even if we narrow it down to violent sites, and even with the preliminary program I've been working on."

"How long would it take you?" Dan asked, forehead creased.  

Cook let out a gusty breath and raised his eyebrows.  "If I worked sixteen hours a day without resting or eating?  Let's see: five-hundred-…"

Dan held up a hand to stop him.  " I get the idea, Cook.  Thanks anyway."

The other man shrugged.  "Don't take it so hard, Morris.  No one is that good with computers."

Scully rubbed her temple, and then interjected gently.  "Actually, I might know someone who can.  Three someones, as a matter of fact."

*         *         *

The satellite connection cleared with a light fizz of static, and Scully found herself staring into three faces she never thought to see again.

"Hello…" she attempted, but Frohike cut her off.

"Well, well, the vaunted Agent Dana Scully.  You finally condescended to contact us after three long years of silence.  No goodbye, no word, and no warning.  Just Mulder stumbling in here drunk as an Irish barfly, and not moving an inch from our couch for a week!  Just-!"

"Frohike," Byers admonished gently.  "She couldn't know about that, and we shouldn't bring him up."

"She'd've known if she'd called, wouldn't she," snapped Langly.  "What can we do for your royal highness?  Is this line secure?"

Scully smiled.  "I confirmed that it was."

"Hmm…" The blond muttered, glancing at her suspiciously.  "How do we know that you haven't been corrupted by your renewed affiliation with the government?"

Scully wondered what Mulder would have said to that.  Then she had it; she held up her hand and twisted her fingers into a salute.  "Scout's honor," she declared.  Frohike stuck his face up to the camera, peering at her and then at Dan, his thick glasses glinting blue in the monitor's glow.

"She's telling the truth," he said.  "Turn off the tapes."  A flurry of clicking and motion ensued, and Scully was left feeling slightly bemused, her usual condition when facing the Gunmen.  Behind her, Dan was speechless. 

Byers appeared again, his face slightly warped by the camera.  "So, Agent Scully, what can we help you with."

"Well," she said.  "There's a rape case that I'm currently assigned to, and through field research, interviews and psychological assessment, we- Agent Morris and I- have determined that the rapist is in actuality taking requests via the internet, profiting from acting out what his 'clients' can only fantasize about."

"That's sick," exclaimed Frohike.  "And believe me, I know twisted."

Langly nodded.  "He knows twisted."  Frohike scowled, then reached up and knocked off the other man's glasses.  Langly dove for the floor.  Byers furrowed his brow.

"Incongruous sexual behavior?" 

Scully nodded.  "Extremely.  What we're looking for is websites or chat rooms that cater to violent, extremely deviant sexuality; rape, power games, torture, confinement…"

Frohike butted his head into view.  "Scully, you just named half the sites out there.  It'd be like asking us to find a website with 'the' in it.  Good luck."

Byers nodded.  "We'll never be able to narrow it down enough."  His soft eyes were worried, and Langly harrumphed his agreement in the background.  Scully raised her eyebrows.

"Our Bureau guy told us the same thing.  I just came to you because I thought you were better, that's all.  If you're not…"

Langly scowled at her, blinking through his glasses.  "That's a low blow, Agent Scully.  Unfortunately for me, it's working.  Frohike, we've still got the Comb 2012, right?"  

The smaller man disappeared under the desk for a moment, and then there was a muffled curse and the desk shook.  Frohike emerged a second later, rubbing his head and holding a small black box.  "Jesus, Scully," he moaned.  "This had better be worth it.  I ruined my hair."

Scully ducked her mouth under her hand, wiping away her grin. "It's worth it, Frohike," she managed when she recovered.  "Believe me."

Byers smiled at her weakly, and Langly turned the box over critically.  After a second, he turned back to the camera.  "This baby let's us search any ISP fourteen times faster than anyone else.  It can also search for up to six keywords in conjunction, making it vastly more accurate than the leading legit device."

"I didn't hear that," Scully heard Dan mutter.  Langly glared and continued.  "You just e-mail over your keyword sets, Scully, and we'll search for as long as it takes."  He returned to the computer fiddling with the small box and muttering under his breath about amateur techie cops.  Frohike stared at Scully a moment, then sighed:

"Still as hot as ever."  Shaking his head, he moved out of the view of the camera.  Only Byers remained, studying her wistfully.

"Well, we'll be in contact with you as soon as we find anything, Agent Scully."  He smiled faintly, crinkled brown eyes still concerned.  "We miss you," he murmured unexpectedly.  "And so does he."  His tone sharpened again.  "Until next time.  Good luck meanwhile."  And suddenly the screen was black.

Scully drew in a deep, shaky breath, and turned to face Dan.  "The Lone Gunmen," she said, eyes stinging.  Dan laughed and shook his head.

"What extraordinary people," he chuckled gently, and they left the room.

_*         *         *_

          The door opens before her with a moan of hinges.  Her keys echo against the metal tumbler of the lock as she slides them out and back into her hand.  Their coppery tang feels dirty on her sweating palm.  

_She flips the plastic switch on the wall, and the empty apartment is pooled in faint overhead light.  It sits on the boxes knifed open in the corner, collects on the styrofoam peanuts scattered on the worn hardwood, on the futon by the window, on the phone tethered to the wall by its grey cord, an island in the sea of emptiness.  _

_The cold ache fills her._

_She moves about the apartment, trying to distract herself, but it's too late now.  She's thought of him.  Everything hurts now: the light, the air, the noise of her footfalls.  Her clothes are sheer agony where they brush her skin.  They burn with cold, and her skin rises and chafes.  Despair makes her frantically restless._

_A board creaks against her foot, and the sound is unbearable because he is not there to hear it.  The kettle boils on the hotplate, and it seems impossible that water should still be allowed to boil when he is not there.  Her mind plummets until the very fact that she is alive seems horribly injust.  Her breaths scorch her throat and collapse her lungs._

_Her hands pressed against her ears, she drops to her knees, and a sob rips from her throat, long and low and breaking her heart. _

*         *         *

Later that night, Scully sat in her kitchen, nursing a cup of tea and studying a manila case file.  She rubbed her eyes, and it seemed almost bloody photographs laid out before her oozed their blood onto the clean table.  Scully shook her head to clear her vision, and the pictures returned to their glossy paper home.  

"I'm overtired," she murmured to herself.  "Imagining things.  I need to get out."  She stood up and collected the photos, gathering the papers and sliding them back into the folder.  She strode to the door and grabbed her keys, letting herself out onto the street.

The night was clear and hot, a faint breeze drifting off the mountains and into the city.  It brushed her cheek as Scully surveyed the street, deciding finally to head for a bar she knew, just around the corner.  

The moon was high and bright, lighting the streets with a silvery brilliance.  The sky was soft and dark, a few strong stars cutting through the light pollution that turned the domed sky into an unbroken ceiling above her head.  The streetlights made orange puddles on the sidewalk, and the August drought had baked the gutters dry.  Scully held almost disconnected as she walked, idly observing the beauty of the night.

She reached the bar in less than five minutes, and as she stepped inside a wave of noise and smell broke over her.  The people stood in clumps around the room, and high above her their was a cloud of smoke that hugged the ceiling.  Scully felt her heart lift at the familiar scene, and the turned as she recognized a voice, clear and strident over the hum of sound.

"So I said, get your hands off my water cooler, bitch.  And she was all, excuse me that's my water cooler, and I said, I think you'll find that…"

"It's got my lipstick all over it." Scully finished for her.  The woman jumped up, beaming.

"Oh my god, Dana!  Where have you been?  I've been trying to call you since Thursday!"

Scully grinned.  "On a case, but I'm home for the weekend.  Why were you calling me?"

"To invite you here, of course.  I've got the most gorgeous friend I want you to meet."

Scully groaned.  "Oh, Joanne, I don't think so.  I hate being set up."

"It's not a set-up, is it?" Joanne responded brightly.  "You arrived on your own.  C'mon, let's go."  She turned away from the man she'd been talking to without a word of explanation, and pulled Scully toward the seating at the back.  Grouped around a table in the quieter area was a motley assortment of people, most of whom Scully knew.  Joanne grabbed a drink of the table, and shushed the group.  "Y'all remember Dana," she said, only slightly slurring the words.  

"Of course we do, Jo, you drunk tart," said another woman, Mary.  "Where you been, darling?"

Scully smiled.  "On assignment, near Delta."

Joanne frowned.  "I have to introduce you," she declared.  "Dana Scully, FBI, meet Robert Abrams, corporate monkey."  The table howled with laughter.  Scully spotted the man at the center of it all, a handsome blond man blushing to the roots of his hair.

"I'm not entirely a corporate monkey," he said sheepishly.  "I do have a corner office."  The table exploded again, and then someone moved over to fit Scully in next to Robert Abrams.  She smiled apologetically, and he gave her a sweet half smile.  "So, you're an FBI agent?" he asked.  She nodded.

"You?"

"Corporate butt monkey, pretty much."  She smiled.  "Where're you from?"

"All over, originally.  Navy brat.  But, uh, Washington DC most recently.  You?"

"Park City.  Utah born and raised.  I'm good-old southwestern boy."  

Scully laughed, and he said:  "Call me Rob."  He awkwardly reached out his hand. She took it.  It was warm and dry.

"Dana," she responded, and they fell into an easy conversation, passing the night in a haze of drinks and conversation.  Scully fell into her bed at three-thirty in the morning, thoroughly tired and completely happy.

*         *         *

The next morning, Scully was reading the paper in her living room when the phone rang suddenly.  She sprang up, pushing her glasses up her nose, and grabbed the phone.

"Hello," she breathed.  

"Agent Scully?  It's John Byers."

"Byers, hi.  Did you find something?"

"Turn on your computer."

Her mouth turned to ice, and she crossed the floor to the computer, starting it with a whir and hum of machinery.  To silence from the other end of the phone line, Scully watched the screen change colors, and the icons appear like blemishes on the desktop.  She started the internet, and it flashed to the home page.

"What to I do now?" she asked apprehensively.  

"Type in 'www.ropetrick.com'."  The man's voice was flat.  Before Scully's horrified eyes, there rose on the desktop an enormous portrait of the serial killer John Wayne Gacy, and after him a succession of mug shots and crime scene photos from a range of different killers.  Byers spoke into her ear.  "Go to the left-hand menu, and click on 'Free-Range'.  After that, click 'Dorian Grey', on the right side this time."  Scully followed his instructions, the websites' content indecipherable to her.  She supposed that was the point, to guard against casual viewers.

"What's next, Byers?"

"After that, click on 'Steak Sauce: Spicy'.  It might take a while to find."  Scully found it after a few moments of frantically scanning the page.  "Finally, click 'Roundup'.  That'll take you right there."

And to Scully's immediate and gut-wrenching horror, the first thing she saw was an immense photo of a frightened woman, bound with rope at the wrists and ankles.  

It was Jolene. 

-         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -         -

**A Very Important A/N:**  I'm thinking of putting this story on hiatus, because I just can't seem to get it right.  Very sad.

However, there are a couple of other options, and I'd like to know what you lovely reader/ reviewer people think.  1) The story goes on hiatus while I get it together and give into the other niggling plot bunnies.  2) If you guys like it how it is, I'll just carry on like I have been.  _Or…_ 3) I redo the story from the beginning with alternating POV chapters, ie. Prologue: Scully in Utah, Prologue: Mulder in DC, Ch. 1: Scully in Utah, Ch. 1: Mulder, etc.  There would be two separate storylines, one for each of them.  My only hesitation with that is that "Disciple" was entirely Scully POV, and it might feel kind of odd.

Anyway, this is the big time where I really need to know what you think.  So, especially this time, please review.

                                                              Thanks, ~ Ceilidh  


End file.
